an agent around every corner
Castro unleashes a new wave of oppression.
While the world's attention is fixed upon the war in Iraq, the communist regime of Fidel Castro's Cuba has been busy suppressing dissidents in a series of heavy-handed show trials reminiscent of Stalinist Russia. Over the past several weeks, 75 opponents of the cigar-smoking dictator have been rounded up, jailed, and herded through the farcical Cuban justice system.
Most of those on trial are associated with the Valera Project, the Cuban opposition movement's effort to democratize the island nation. Luis Enrique Ferrer, a coordinator for the Project, was sentenced to 28 years for treason. Others face sentences up to 25 years.
One fact, which should come as little surprise, is that while ostensibly allowing a degree of dissent in the past several years, Castro has been loading the opposition with agents of the Cuban secret police. No less than a dozen supposed anti-Castro activists provided testimony on behalf of the government in the most recent series of trials. Included among them was Aleida Beatriz, who worked as a secretary for famed dissent economist Martha Beatriz Roque.
Meanwhile, other Cubans frustrated by years of repression have taken to hijacking. Two aircraft have been hijacked since late March - one a DC-3 that made it to Miami, the other a small commuter plane that was forced to land in Havana as it lacked the fuel to get to the United States. Also, a ferryboat was hijacked by a group of 15 men and sailed toward Florida earlier this month. That attempt failed when the boat ran out of fuel 30 miles north of Cuba.
The desperation of Cuba is one of the sad, final chapters of the misery of the great social experiment of the 20th century. Without the Soviet Union's financial support, the Cuban economy grows more and more impoverished every year. Cuban society is frozen several decades in the past, weighed down by a bankrupt ideology - and the people of Cuba are the ones who suffer for it. Castro has, despite a half century of opposition from the United States, remarkably managed to maintain his hold on power. At age 76, his steady approach to the grave seems to be the only salvation the oppressed masses of Cuba have.
10.04.2003 © ljr